1) Friday's
newspapers brought two more developments for the networks to ignore.

-- "White House Alters Defense" announced an October 17 USA
Today headline. Reporter Mimi Hall explained:
"Critics say Clinton's close
direction of advertising by the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
was part of an effort to subvert spending limits that went government
financing of the Clinton-Gore campaign.
"For months, the White House has
generally issued blanket statements that everything Clinton did in
1996 was legal.
"On Thursday, White House counsel
Lanny Davis took a different tack. He conceded that Clinton, in
effect, managed the DNC's $44 million ad campaign and said that there
was nothing wrong with that."

In other words, they lied for months. Coverage: As noted in the
October 17 CyberAlert, nothing about fundraising aired on the
Thursday, October 16 ABC, CBS and NBC evening shows nor CNN's The
World Today. Also nothing about fundraising on the October 17 shows,
but more on that follows.

-- "A Lobbyist's Lucrative Ties to Gore: Ex-Aide Raised Funds
from Client, Helped Its Federal Business," declared a from page
Washington Post headline on Friday. In the October 17 story Post
reporter Bob Woodward focused on former Gore aide Peter Knight.
Woodward asserted:
"Records show that Knight's
involvement with a network of Gore supporters and friends, his
political connections and his own business pursuits allowed him
simultaneously to make money for himself, assist his clients as they
sought and won federal business, and raise funds for the Democratic
National Committee, the Clinton-Gore campaign and other Gore
causes."

Woodward illustrated the process by looking at Molten Metal
Technology, a Massachusetts hazardous waste disposal company that
Knight's consulting firm represents. In 1995 Knight got the company
chief, William Haney, to pledge $50,000 to the Clinton-Gore campaign.
Knight then got Gore to visit Molten's headquarters, leading Molten's
stock price to double. "Knight exercised a portion of the option
he had received from the company, making more than $90,000 before
taxes."

Molten's technology was developed thanks to Department of Energy
grants awarded by a program overseen by Assistant Energy Secretary
Thomas Grumbly, another former Gore staffer. Woodward discovered:
"Two days after the March 22 donation, the Department of Energy
announced it would expand an existing $1.2 million research contract
with Molten to develop technology for hazardous waste disposal by $9
million." Woodward later added: "By 1996, Molten's
government research and development contract would reach $33 million,
more than the combined total distributed to the 18 other companies in
the program." Along the way Haney kept coughing up big checks to
the DNC and Clinton-Gore.

Coverage: Zilch Friday morning or evening on any of the broadcast
networks. But isn't this old news? So maybe the networks reported it
when the story outline was laid out in Time magazine. Good thought,
but not true. As reported in the June 6 CyberAlert, five days after
the June 9 Time hit newsstands, the networks (even CNN) ignored that
story too.
Back then Time's Michael Weisskopf
uncovered how DNC donor Bill Haney had been taken care of by Al Gore:
"Since the Vice President took office, the Energy Department's
cleanup division, headed until recently by a Gore protege has awarded
Haney's Molten Metal Technology $33 million to test its process on the
poisoned remains of nuclear weapons proving grounds -- more money than
17 other companies have received collectively to do the same job. More
startling is that the department kept lavishing dollars on the firm
until this March, despite the advice of the government's own experts
who, according to documents obtained by Time, repeatedly challenged
the effectiveness of Molten Metal's technology."

So, what did concern the networks last Friday, October 17? All three
broadcast networks led with the news that some insurance companies are
considering charging SUV owners more for liability insurance to cover
the greater damage they cause to vehicles they hit. NBC and ABC ran
pieces on a woman's egg that was successfully frozen, an event that
ABC's Diane Sawyer exclaimed "could release women from the
tyranny of the biological clock."

And the CBS Evening News inaugurated a new weekly segment on....well,
I'll let Dan Rather explain: "Forecasters continue to emphasize
it could be the weather event of the century, so tonight we begin what
will be a weekly El Nino Watch. CBS is going to track the weather
system closely, this weather system that's warming the Pacific, and
show you the impact in your area and around the world."

2) Liberal
Stars. A couple a examples of political activism by Hollywood stars on
behalf of Al Gore's 2000 campaign and Hillary Clinton's advocacy for
more welfare spending:

-- At the end of an article on Al Gore's speech to the Hollywood Radio
and Television Society in which he said that because of
"Ellen" coming out Americans were "forced to look at
sexual orientation in a more open light," the October 18
Washington Post story revealed: "Following his speech, Gore had
dinner with a group of entertainment figures that included actor Tom
Hanks and director Rob Reiner."

-- In Friday's USA Today celebrity tracker Jeannie Williams reported:
"Hillary Rodham Clinton will take the stage Monday at New York's
Avery Fisher Hall to help celebrate the Children's Defense Fund's 25th
anniversary. Glen Close will introduce the First Lady, who'll read
from her book, It Takes a Village, then introduce longtime friend
Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the private fund. Other celebs due:
Rosie O'Donnell, Phylicia Rashad and Bebe Neuwirth." Rashad plays
Bill Cosby's wife on the CBS sit- com and Neuwirth is best known as
"Lileth" on Cheers.

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